A report from the UK's Overseas Development Institute (ODI) due out on Monday will say the elite emerging nations of the past two decades have four building blocks in common – smart leadership, smart policies, smart institutions and smart friends.

The London-based thinktank says its study of 24 developing nations has thrown up countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa where broad-based improvements in living standards have been sustained over a lengthy period.

The report is being published amid a row over the wisdom of ring-fencing the aid budget at a time when the chancellor is insisting on spending restraint for every other Whitehall department bar health. Critics of the government's decision to stick to Labour's plan to raise development assistance to 0.7% of national output by 2013 say that aid money often does more harm than good and traps countries in dependency.

Seeking to defuse the controversy, the ODI says that financial assistance has helped to foster faster development – but has been only one factor among many.

"The international community has rarely been the sole determinant of development progress, but smart partnerships have often played a catalytic role in terms of facilitation support," the report, entitled Mapping Progress, says.

Citing Bangladesh as an example, the ODI says there has been an effective partnership between government, aid donors and local NGOs to improve healthcare there. Governments in poor countries have to adopt a strong co-ordinating role and use aid money for well-thought-out strategies to boost specific sectors, the ODI says; development works best when effective leadership, smart policies, strong institutional frameworks and international partnerships mesh. In those circumstances, it is possible to see "remarkable progress" even in countries that have been blighted by war or famine in the recent past.

"The real question we need to answer is 'what works and why?'" says Alison Evans, the ODI's director. "Why have some of these countries seen such remarkable progress? What have been the most interesting innovations?

"Looking across at the strongest examples across the continent we can see that the most transformative and sustainable developments have occurred when the commitment to change has come from within African countries and communities."

Although many countries are off track to achieve the targets set for 2015 by the United Nations millennium development goals, the ODI is keen to show that progress was not only possible but already happening. It says the nine "stars" of global development have been Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ghana, Mauritius, Thailand, Uganda and Vietnam.

A second category, "surprises", are countries where progress is rapidly gaining momentum but without a long enough track record to be confident that it would be sustained. This group includes Cambodia, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Laos, Rwanda and Somaliland, the breakaway autonomous region in Somalia.

Next in line are the "potentials" – Benin, Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Malawi and Namibia – examples of progress made against the odds in countries coming out of conflict or struggling with their geographical or cultural heritage. India, Egypt and South Africa, are dubbed "conundrums" by the ODI, since strong progress in some programmes has yet to have a major impact on poverty.

"Star countries have shown sustained progress for more than two decades. Progress has entailed diversification of products and services, and improved value added. For example, Thailand experienced a successful transformation from an agrarian economy dependent on primary exports to an economy based largely on manufacturing and services," the report says.

Rejecting the notion that a charismatic figurehead is a prerequisite for success, the ODI says leadership can manifest itself in unexpected ways: political leadership has been important to agriculture in Ghana, bureaucratic leadership to rural water reform in Laos, and civil society to social security in India.

Ethiopia and Benin had launched successful campaigns to get more girls into schools, while decentralisation reforms had been crucial to Namibia's progress in environmental conservation and Ethiopia's advances in education.

While countries such as Mauritius had been able to grow rapidly while reducing income poverty, and Vietnam had combined poverty reductions with a big drop in under-five mortality, the ODI stresses that even for the star performers, progress should not be confused with success. "Success implies that an optimal level of wellbeing and development has been reached. Development progress, on the other hand, signifies movement towards greater levels of wellbeing."